


Star Crossed

by smolintj



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Love, M/M, Romance, Science Boyfriends, Shadam, Who doesn't love Science Gays?, broganes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 16:56:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15369102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolintj/pseuds/smolintj
Summary: "My name is Adam Svarovsky. I am a flight engineer at the Galaxy Garrison. And I think I might have killed the greatest pilot of my generation."After convincing Shiro to leave the Garrison to join the Kerberos mission and pursue the pursuit of adventure and scientific greatness, Adam, his fiance, is left alone. While the administration may blame the Kerberos mission's failure on "pilot error", Adam knows better, and he is determined to find the truth, no matter how long it takes.





	1. ONE

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! So I am beyond thrilled to hear the confirmation of Adam as Shiro's boyfriend in voltron! I have been waiting for the promised LGBT rep in the show since the first season and I'm delighted! Shiro has always been a character very close to my heart, and I want the best for him, so fuckit, I guess I'll write it myself. Even as the 7th season drops, I'm planning to carry on this fic with mostly my prior assumptions since I don't really trust the show to not make Adam a cardboard-cutout of a character, and Shiro deserves better! I hope you enjoy!

“Go. Be great. And then come back for me, okay?” I remembered smiling, trying to swallow the lump in my throat as I said it. Knowing exactly what I was offering up only made it worse.  
“I can’t do that. I can’t believe this, I mean, why me? How did they pick me, out of all the applicants, I’m-“  
I cut Shiro off, shaking my head, “Shiro… they picked you because you’re the best. The best pilot of your age. We all know it at the Garrison, and now the rest of the world will know it too. You have to do it, because you are the best. No one else can do it, Shiro.”  
I knew it was true and so did he, deep down. He sighed, and put down the tablet that had given him his acceptance message, “But what about you?” he asked, avoiding eye contact.  
“What about me?”, I replied, “I’m a grown ass man, Shiro, even if I stand a head shorter than you.”  
That got the smile I was hoping for, and I continued, “Honestly, without you around to distract me I’ll probably just get a lot more done. Have a lot more test modules for you when you get back.”  
His eyes lit up some at that, and he glanced up, keeping his head ducked slightly, but looking me in the eye again, “Have you looked into the module design for Kerberos?”  
“Of course, it’s wicked.”  
Shiro chuckled a bit at that, “Yeah, definitely. I honestly… I can’t wait to fly it.”  
“Me either! You’re going to be incredible! And I’ll be watching the whole time, you know that.”  
Shiro laughed at that, “No you won’t! You barely come out of your shop as it is!”  
I sidled a bit closer and joked, “Hey, I already came out for you, I’ll do it again…”  
He rolled his eyes, “Oh shut up and come over here, you idiot,” and pulled me in for a kiss. I still remember how good that kiss felt, and how perfect everything felt in that single moment, holding each other close, kissing softly, and with the entire world at our feet. With everything falling into place and our whole lives ahead of us. In retrospect, the kiss was excellent, except it tasted a bit salty. I wonder if he noticed.  
My name is Adam Svarovsky. I am a flight engineer at the Galaxy Garrison. And I think I might have killed the greatest pilot of my generation. Watching the news unfold on that awful day still puts an acrid taste in my mouth, like blood. Sometimes I catch myself biting my tongue, sometimes the taste is just imagined. I can’t ever seem to remember what I felt in those moments, or even what I thought. It was like watching something unfold on a screen, happening far away to someone else. In a movie, or maybe a dream. It just loops again and again. I watch myself approach the food court, trying to rub the grease and motor oil stains onto my coveralls before I eat. I check my fingertips, apparently decide they’re good enough, and step through the door. As if from above, I see every head in the large room turn, all conversations dying immediately, just hundreds of eyes on me. The only sound left is the announcer on the televisions mounted on the walls, “-investigations are ongoing, but the Galaxy Garrison has reported recently that they have received no contact from the Kerberos Mission Crew in several days, and have concluded that the mission has failed. We as a nation, as a society, and as a species, must mourn today the loss of some of our greatest individuals, these brave men who undertook this mission. May they be remembered as heroes, and may they rest in peace. Dr. Samuel Holt, his son Matthew Holt, and their pilot, Takashi Shirogane, will long be remembered, and may we learn from their mistakes to prevent a tragedy like this in the future. We will now take you to several Garrison members who knew these individuals well, to speak about them and preserve their memory for-“ The young man in the center of the room moves slowly forwards, towards a monitor, as if in a trance. I see myself blink in confusion before finally squeaking out a word, “Days?”  
The hundreds of eyes that had been looking at me turned balefully towards the floor as I see myself jump into motion, beginning to walk towards the door again, clearly holding back vomit, “W-why wasn’t I told? Who knows about this? Who has the authority to- have they checked the relay? Why did no one tell me?”  
I didn’t wait around to hear answers, but stormed, in a daze, towards high command. Everyone I met, who had presumably heard the news, glued themselves to the walls at my passing. A few reached out comforting hands or muttered some condolences but I can’t remember any of their faces or their voices. But none of that mattered now. There was only one person’s voice I cared about hearing.  
High command was behind their security doors, with passcodes and fingerprinting and all. I remember shouting until my throat felt like it bled, but I’m not sure what I said. I remember looking at my hands and seeing the motor oil wedged deep into the grooves on my fingers, outlining my fingerprints in livid detail.  
I remember darkness gathering.  
Finally, I remember a hand on my shoulder. I’m not sure if I fell asleep. I’m not sure if I cried, but the night was broken by the hand making contact, reaching through my haze and reminding me that I was real, and solid, and alive.  
I looked up to see an officer staring at me. “It’s past curfew, son, are you lost?” he asked, gruffly.  
I don’t think I answered. I think I just got up and walked away, back to my shop. I don’t think I slept. I don’t remember after that.


	2. TWO

I didn’t get into Galaxy Garrison for nothing, after all, so it was time to get smart. I made an official appointment. I called in all my favors with every professor, engineer, or administrator I knew. I made an official appointment, and I made it fast. Fast, of course, in bureaucratic speech, means nothing.  
Those days were hellish, made more hellish by the whispers that followed me. I knew there had to be something wrong. After all, what do the bureaucrats know that an engineer couldn’t? They probably fucked up the relay and didn’t bother to ask anyone who actually knew how it worked. They probably didn’t realize that the backup signaling devices could be very difficult to hear, and would take at least a week to get here.   
Still, it put a horrible knot in my stomach to think of Shiro and Matt and Sam, marooned and calling out reports, only to hear static and silence.   
I walked into the meeting armed with a kind of polite detachedness that traitorously belied my true feelings. I wore my best uniform, the one that I’d saved to wear for graduation. But this was more important than any stupid ceremony. This was life and death. Finally, the door opened, and I was permitted to approach the commodore. His office, unlike the rest of the tidy, utilitarian Garrison, was carpeted in deep plush that didn’t make a sound as I stepped in. I felt as if I floated to the uncomfortable wooden chair before his desk.   
He didn’t look up, scrolling through a tablet in his hand with a furrowed brow, “What do you want? I’ve had everyone on the base telling me they believed you would do something drastic if I didn’t meet with you. So here we are, be quick.”  
I cleared my throat, choosing my words carefully. “Sir, I am Adam Svarovsky. Takashi Shirogane is my fian-“  
“Yes, yes, I know who you are. What do you want from me?”  
“Sir, I want to know who made the call.”  
“The call? What call?” he snaps, clearly losing patience.  
“The call to determine the mission lost. The call to the media. Based on what evidence? Who has that authority? When was this decided? Upon what evidence? Who is working on the systems to ensure that they are functioning? How did you keep this all under wraps? Why did no one tell me?” my voice involuntarily cracks slightly on the last question, and I clear my throat again before quickly saying, pitching my voice low, “Who made the call, sir?”  
The commodore sighs heavily, clearly uncomfortable. He pretends to stare at his tablet, but his eyes are no longer panning the pages, instead they stare straight at it. “Well, Mr. Svarovsky, you know it is Garrison policy to only inform direct family members about sensitive-“  
“With all due respect sir, I am his family, and anyone you bothered to ask about it would tell you the same.”  
He finally looks up from his tablet, placing it down and looking down on me with irritation. “With all due respect, officer, the Garrison defines direct familial relation as a parent, a spouse, or a sibling by blood or marria-“  
“I am his fiancé.”  
“Yes,” he looks me right in the eye for the first time, “but you were not his husband.”  
I close my eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. “I am not his husband, not yet,” I correct. “And besides,” I continue, “you’ve already told the news, what is there to hide?”  
The commodore massages the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Listen. The media are vultures. If they don’t know who you are yet, it’s only because your friends within the Garrison have been hiding you from them. I’ve been told by my supervisors to make sure you don’t go out saying anything bad about the Garrison to them. There will be enough conspiracy theorists as it is, the last thing we need is a media circus about our failures.” He grimaces, seeming to remember who he’s talking to, and coughs, “Anyway. I mean to say is that, within reason, I have been given permission to give you certain privileges in exchange for you allowing this to die down quickly. What do you say, huh?”  
I stared at him. Never in my life had I ever so badly to be listened to, to shout the injustice of all of this to us by this Garrison that had taken our skills and shipped Shiro off. But there were more important things to be done. I had to contact them. I had to find out. I had to know. But I swallowed, instead, and trying to keep the tremor from my voice, I say softly, “I want to know who made the call. I want to know how it was made. And I want to see the equipment. Nothing less.”  
I could feel my hands shaking as I stared into the commodore’s cold blue eyes. He took a deep, irritated breath, his nostrils flaring, before looking back to his tablet and muttering, “I’ll see what I can do. Dismissed. You will be contacted soon.”  
I stood, trying to walk over the soft carpet without tripping over my legs that no longer seemed to support me, and heard him call after me. “Do not do anything, until you are contacted by me.”  
I didn’t answer, but walked out the door and shut it softly, feeling as if I had come through an airlock into a place I could breathe. The hallway was so full of air compared to the vacuum of that office.  
Somehow, I found my way back to our bunkroom, lit only by faint moonlight coming in the window. The bed was just as he’d left it; made neatly and crisply, military style, no unnecessary ornamentation. I hadn’t been able to think about looking at it. I’d set up a cot in my shop for the time being, giving some excuse about “needing to work more hours”, but I don’t think anyone believed me. A thin, soft settling of dust had blanketed the room, preserving it like a museum, or a tomb. Our desks sat side by side, his organized with piles of reports, flight headings, astronomical charts, with an astrolabe sitting neatly on top, mine a tangle of schematics, compasses and drawing equipment, with notes scrawled in the margins of all the papers, and several of my desk drawers wedged partially open by screwdrivers, engineer’s scales, and flight manuals. The room was sparsely furnished, mostly empty excepting the workspace, with neat dressers and a doorway off to a cramped bathroom. Small model spacecraft of intricate detail hung suspended from the ceiling, a bookshelf full of manuals, tablets and ancient textbooks, a telescope by the window, pointing upwards. If only I’d realized this is what heaven looked like, before it went cold.  
I found myself walking towards the telescope, drawn towards the one source of light in the room. I looked out, and over the drab rooftops of the lower buildings of the Garrison stretched the desert, with its beautiful formations extending fingerlike shadows outwards to the horizon, as if trying to hold the entire world in place. Shiro and I would go hiking out there, often led by his younger brother Keith, who seemed suspiciously comfortable in such a desolate place. Above, the night was clear, the stars warbling in and out of focus with the sway of the hot air after a long desert day finally relieved. I checked the electronic chart on the wall, giving updating records of astronomical positions and movements. I tap one of its saved locations: Kerberos, from when we would huddle together over this telescope every night, talking about the furthest reaches of the solar system, and how Shiro himself was chosen to reach out and touch them. The telescope whirred softly as it moved into position, focusing itself carefully, and I peered through. Kerberos is an oblong grey rocky body, unremarkable in every way except its position; as the furthest we’ve ever gone, as the edge of everything we know.  
Looking at it, it’s hard to understand why we would put our hopes into a small, ugly rock in the frozen depths of space. But it’s hard to understand many of the things humans put their blind faith in, including me. I wonder how on earth I could have thought that this cold broken rock, of all things, was worth everything to me.  
“I’m sorry, Shiro.”  
The silence was deafening and felt as if the pressure in the room was pressing on my eardrums.  
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But please know. I will find you. I swear. And if I don’t… well.” I felt a smile tug at one corner of my mouth, “I did make you promise to come back for me.”


End file.
